Network service providers recognize the key role that conferencing services play in the conduct of modern business. Despite the evolution in communications infrastructure and associated services, advancements in conferencing facilities have remained relatively stagnant, with the focus on improving audio conferencing systems. Collaborative applications, such as whiteboarding, have emerged as tools that are helpful in supporting productive meetings. However, these applications have largely been implemented at the end user level, with little or no coordination with the conferencing facilities.
Conventionally, the approach to scheduling conferences among many participants is performed in an ad hoc manner, and is manually intensive. For example, when a manager wants to set up a meeting with his team members who are geographically dispersed, the manager typically instructs an assistant to contact each of the potential participants either through e-mail or telephone. Generally, this invitation and response process is performed several times until the assistant can establish a time that is suitable for all of the team members. Thereafter, the assistant can schedule a time slot with the service provider for reserving the conference bridge. Generally, this conference bridge is reserved well in advance of the actual meeting date. Even up to this point in the process, scheduling and coordinating calendars can be overly cumbersome, particularly if the number of participants is large. Moreover, during the time period between the set up and the meeting date, invariably one or more of the team members will have a conflict that arises, thereby necessitating rescheduling of the meeting. Consequently, the assistant will need to begin this process anew to schedule the meeting; otherwise absenteeism can hinder the productivity of the meeting or render it all together ineffective, especially if the key members are not there to provide input.
Additionally, after the extensive effort at scheduling the conference, traditional conference facilities provide no services that assist with improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the meeting. That is, the provider of the conferencing services now merely supplies circuits and ports on the conference bridge.
Therefore, there is a need for providing enhanced conferencing services to facilitate the scheduling and conducting of the meeting.